Philadelphia newspaper employees planning to strike

Yes. If I had to. My family comes first and everything else is vying for a distant second.

 

There are other ways to put food on the table for your family.

I also think putting food on the table is a load of bullshit, it's more that my family isn't as comfortable and we may have to cutback on a few things.

I hope you would also refuse any benefits gained by the people who weren't so selfish and lost out on more income than you to get these benefits.

If people disagree with unions, fine, don't join one. If you a part of one, support it.

 

I'm not in a union. Never have been. Go get what you can, and I'll do the same.

Please. Have you ever been poor and/or out of work? I have. Thankfully, I was single during the time when I had to choose between eating and putting enough gas in my car to get to work, because I couldn't afford both.

 

Would/should your feelings about what the union is striking for factor into your decision?

Purely hypothetical: Say the newspaper employees are striking for a 10 percent raise in a landscape where every other newspaper employee in the nation is accepting 10 percent cuts from their company, guild or not. Say those employees are already on the upper end of the salary spectrum of newspaper employees nationwide. Should that factor into the decision of a freelancer who is hustling from gig to gig to scrape together a $30,000/year living? Or do you respect the picket line to help the union guys in their fight to go from $70,000/year to $77,000/year?

What if you decide the strikers are delusional and there is no way the company can accommodate their demands and the thing is destined to end with the guild broken? How long should you wait before resuming your freelance assignments? How long was it before it was acceptable to accept a job as an Air Traffic Controller? Or are all of the current ATCs still scabs?

I'm not being smart. I'm genuinely curious.

 

No newspaper union is seeking a 10-percent raise in this climate, so your straw man is quickly knocked down.

I have sympathy for those who have to choose between crossing a picket line and having their family starve. It's not a bullshit excuse, despite what one person said. But a bank robber is still called a bank robber, no matter what.

 

It's not a straw man. It's a reductio ad absurdum invalidation of the argument that crossing a picket line is immoral, regardless of the circumstances. That is the argument that JC made. He did not argue that crossing THIS picket line would be immoral. If he had, then, yes, my argument would be a straw man. But JC claimed that crossing ANY picket line would be immoral.

If you can't understand that, then we can't really talk this thing out. Otherwise, you must acknowledge that a union has the ability to make demands that a prospective scab would deem unreasonable. If a union went on strike because the company refused to institute a 20-hour work week at a minimum salary of $100,000, would you refuse to cross that line in order to feed your family? Because JC says that it would be immoral to do so, because a strike is a strike, and a picket line is a picket line, regardless of the underlying issues.

If you acknowledge that a scab would be justified in crossing that line, then you acknowledge that there are situations in which it is justifiable to cross a picket line. And that brings us to the questions that I asked, and the ones that you ignored. So if you'd like to address them, now, I'd be interested to hear your answers. If not, just know that it was not a straw man, and that you are wrong.

 

20 hour work week for a 100 grand? At least you're being realistic.

A scab is a scab, it's not complicated. I also never used the term immoral.

If you are part if a union, don't cross. If you are a non Union employee willing to cross, I understand that a little more.

 

Reductio ad absurdum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you are not saying it is immoral, then how can you offer an unqualified "don't." The only behaviors that I can think of that merit an unqualified "don't" are immoral behaviors.

Regardless, it certainly does not sound like you understand it. And you still didn't answer the questions.

All I'm suggesting is that, as with everything in life, there is a spectrum. If you are a coal miner striking for a living wage and a safer work environment, the implications of you crossing are a lot more dire than if you are a newspaper employee striking against a paycut that takes your salary from $70,000 to $60,000. I'm not saying that crossing in either instance is the ethical/moral decision. All I'm saying is that it is silly to pretend that the two instances are parallel, and I would even suggest that such delusion is one of the reasons why the public has soured on unions so much over the last 40 years, and from a macroscopic perspective is more detrimental to the cause than crossing. But that's another argument for another day.

 

I understand it just fine. I've lived it as a kid and as an adult.

Scabs are pieces of shit and under no circumstances would I cross, none. You do what YOU need to do but if you cross I hope you refuse the gains the union eventually makes.

I have far more repect for non union people than someone who willingly joins a union than goes against them when they are needed.

If you don't agree with what your union is doing, get out of the union and go find other work.

 

And, as I alluded, that type of mentality is why Right to Work legislation makes so much sense to the voting public.

"Well," they think, "if a worker does not like what the union stands for and does not wish to be represented by that union, then why can't he/she leave that union and deal with the company on his/her own?"

I know that's not what you are arguing. If I'm correct, you are saying that the person should go find work at a non-union shop. But the voting public looks at it and says, well, in a city like Philadelphia there is only one newspaper company that makes enough revenue to offer its employees a certain threshold of living, which means that union essentially has a monopoly on that threshold for those of a certain skill set. If I am a sports writer in the Philadelphia area who wants to earn more than $55,000 per year, I have to work at the Inquirer or the Daily News. Which means I have to join the union. Because that's the law.

The public looks at it and says, well, if you or a representative can negotiate a salary north of $55,000 per year without the union, and you don't agree with anything else the union stands for (seniority, vacation, specialization of tasks, etc), then why should you be obligated to join? That is how the voting public thinks, as it has made clear with its support for RTW.

To them, it's like you are saying if you don't like the rates that you are paying for cable, go get cable somewhere else. Except you can't get cable from somewhere else in Philadelphia. Or, if you don't like the rates that the water company is charging you, don't drink water. Hey, agree or disagree, the voting public has made clear that that's the way it sees things. And its support for unions began to drop right around the time it stopped being asked to support struggling blue-collar workers who were making far less than them and started being asked to unconditionally support the demands of white-collar workers who were already making more money than the majority of the country.

And to tie it all back to the case at hand, I would guess that the public will not have much empathy for these particular strikers, because I would be willing to bet that the company will make it known that most of the strikers are being asked to accept salaries that would still put the majority of them well above the national median income.

So, whatever, fuck all the scabs you want. Even if I agree with your underlying principles, I think your mentality is a foolish one that has done more harm than good to the labor movement, particularly since the 1980s.

 

Thank you for illustrating how ignorant the general public is of unions and their proud history. Right to Work is a tool business owners, through their hired puppets in public office, use to ensure they pay their workers as little as possible.

In brief ... the whole reason unions exist is for better bargaining power and working conditions. Management is always united against workers. Why not the reverse?

 

I understand what Right to Work is. The question was, would you cross a picket line? Not: are unions good or bad?